May 2025 - 'We took you to STATELY HOMES' thread.

[Pleaseshutthefuckup]

Hope all ok with a new thread here. I've looked and can't find one anywhere past February.

Believe me I’ve detached an awful lot from them but he is part of the system. I really thought he was different but he’s not turning out to be any different.

Hi I have been a lurker on these threads for a few years, intermittently. I am always able to convince myself that my DM is not 'that bad' and then put my head in the sand for a bit. Think I am ready to start talking about things a bit more and hopefully start to heal.

I am going to go back and read the whole thread, I have started it and resonate with a lot.
A PP up thread said something about an ICK list. I think that is a good starting point for me to get everything written down and out of my head for a bit.

Right now I am trying to grey rock grey rock grey rock. It is tricky when she is used to me giving more info and I have received messages asking what's wrong and why am I so quiet.
Worst thing is we have a holiday this year together 😳

@frostedshreddie hello!

I'm through the stage of suddenly realising that it's not safe to share (after years of over sharing) and kind of on the other side now. Ready to chat when you are.

Nope do not share that that can and will be used against you. It’s only used by them to confirm to themselves that you are indeed faulty and they are superior. There’s me thinking that we share because the other person loves us and they understand and help us and guide us. No no no it’s just proof you stupid and inferior. What a lesson that has been to an over sharer!

Nothing wrong with you and the issues and troubles you have as we all have many through life. Many people will be able to empathise and offer advice with no ties. The issues is the ears that it falls on! Narc ears are toxic!

What I found, when I shared stuff with my mother, was that she gave terrible advice (which I felt obliged to follow, often to my own detriment), and if I was in difficulty or needed support, she would struggle with the fact that I was in difficulty and need my support to help her cope with it). So I stopped telling her anything that matters. It's really hard, though. The fact that I can't lean on her doesn't mean that I don't need someone to lean on, I do, because that's normal, I just don't have anyone to fulfil that role, because the people who should be doing it were both incapable.

I shared nothing with my mum, I lied, hid, just stayed in my room so that I didn’t make waves. I’ve not been able to get to grips with this. Whether it was my ND stopping me from knowing what to do to have a relationship with my mum and she also or I leaned very early on (can’t remember when) that she wasn’t someone to share with. I hid boyfriends, period, illness, good things, bad things you name it I hid it. I’m still like this now. I don’t want the thing to be real because I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it, so I pretend it’s not there. My mum is definitely not receptive, encouraging even now. Also because my mum was ill growing up I didn’t want to make her worse. My whole childhood was full of anxiety. She isn’t a narc tho.

@Happyfarm I hid too. Spent a lot of time alone in my bedroom.

I have this part of me that wants to be noticed, even now. I hide because I don’t want to be noticed but I also want to be noticed. It’s disordered and conflicted!

Do you have to do this holiday? I'd try with everything to get out of it.

My mum was upping the most appalling behaviour as I get more unwell. I was therefore forced to tell her I needed space because of the behaviour - and I spelt out that current behaviour. Not the lifetime of behaviour of course, but she knows I know now. It's a relief to have peace.

They don't react well. It is however the start of this if they don't bugger off with grey rock.

I was just thinking about ADHD and c-ptsd. I wonder if these two conditions just cause the body to over activate and trigger too easily? Which is why we become emotional very quickly and really struggle to contain it. Our threat detectors are set to go off too easily and to hard. Mine caused me to literally play dead. My daughter tried hide but then she went onto attack. We over react in a sense, it’s like life or death each and every time to things which we could just brush off.

I think it is Gabor Mate who has suggested that ADHD is a symptom of a difficult childhood rather than a condition that exists independently of it, because it's thought processes/nervous system activity that was learned as a survival strategy in a less than ideal environment. It was needed at the time. The problem is what to do with it as you get older, when it's not appropriate any more.

I don't have it I don't think, but I am definitely what would have been called highly strung a few years ago. I've got a baseline level of arousal where it takes very little to tip me over into massively anxious. The roots are obvious - I had to constantly be on guard as a child, constantly listening, watching, checking my behaviour, checking everyone else. I could just never relax because it was like living with a dangerous dog. I think most of the time I cope pretty well, but it makes life so small. In childhood it was a survival strategy that kept me out of danger as much as possible by enabling me to avoid triggering his rage, though it wasn't always successful. Now as an adult it's like I can't stop doing it except there's no-one here who's going to attack me.

My nephew has this also and he has had a very happy childhood. Friends kids also are ADHD with no trauma. I think I was born ADHD so is my mum and daughter. The difference being my daughters has been acknowledged. What we are trying to do with her is to teach her that her emotions are not a threat, they aren’t to be scare of, to avoid, to shut down etc. I had no choice but to develop terrible behaviours. My daughter at the moment sees the person who activated her emotions as the threat. Feels narcissistic but I’m hoping with work she will be ok. I went down the people pleasing root in order not to be on the receiving end of someone activating me. We just constantly feel threatened but I’ve come to understand that the way I feel is not to be scared of.

I see that there are similarities between my son who is ND and myself. I'm not ND yet can have similar traits. I see my son can struggle with regulation. At times, I'm highly reactive. I am however and I stress this, not an aggressive person!!! I don't road rage, ( well very very rarely), I don't ever throw my weight around, I don't ever attack people's and lose my shit on people for no reason ever. I'm a pretty ' compliant ' person.

Buy, I've said it here before. I've felt so at the edge of what I can handle I have stomped round my house actually shouting c bomb, fucking no more ( on my own). And this is not typical behaviour for healthy people possibly.

I know now this is a lifetime of abuse. Not one healthy functioning person at all in my entire bloody life and I only recently realised it and am doing everything to manage exposure to that. Without exposure to this, the reactivity stops.

We have talked about needing a space completely detached from exposure. At the moment, you don't really have it as much as might be good for you. So you're going to have the double whammy of possible challenges with ADHD ( I believe strongly this is genetic more so than Gabor's theory). You also have the added traumatic experience of dealing with CFs.

Have you ever thought about going away somewhere on your own? On a retreat for a weekend? No other fucker invited and they can get fucked if they don't like that. If your daughter is with her father why not? She will be just fine even if she protests.

Phone switched off. Unavailable? One wknd?

I wouldn’t like it! As much as I don’t like people I do love my little family. They motivate me to push on. I think I’d just sleep forever if I went on my own.

I think Gabor's theory fits on top of the idea that we inherit the family nervous system, especially if earlier generations have experienced significant trauma. They pass their traumatised nervous system on to the next generation.

Add more trauma on top of that, and here we are.

What's helpful about Gabor's theory is that it gives us some light at the end of the tunnel, that it is possible to make things better for yourself, that we can retrain some of our responses.

Ok that's fair enough. Do you think you lose clarity of mind sometimes when you're always with them?

I stress alot the need for detachments. Without it, you get sucked into the soup of confusion and start living in a reality created for you. When you step out a little, you start seeing another reality and identify needs of your own that you have ignored.

I highlight this because I know you have glimpses of difficult behaviour at times from those closest to you. I understand this as you know. Separation and detachment helps me clearly see this with those I have no choice but to interact with. It helps me stay grounded and not get sucked into this alternative reality. By that I mean a reality where you're gaslit and guilt tripped and you start to believe it. Then you stop tending to yourself. It's horrible. My posts probably convey when I'm in this ' soup' as they become a bit panicked and long. You'll see the pattern!

Time doing your hobbies sounds like a good time for some detachment.

I do love listening to Gabor. What he says resonates so much and he presents an honesty that I really like.

My teen is Autistic,very ADHD too. The paternal family has multiple multiple people who are ND. I believe my ex certainly is now as very strong pattern across whole family.

I still to this day deal with denial and refusal to accept this on that side that blows my absolute mind. The genetic inheritance pattern is significant. Son fully assessed and diagnosed following my insistence.

I think that feeds into my frustration regarding Gabor saying that. It's personal if I'm honest. It's another possible whip to undermine this genetic inheritance pattern we see across families and feeds the gaslighting that many mum's like me experience. It doesn't mean there isn't validity in some part of his theory. Where Autism is a co morbid, and I believe it is at higher rates than realised, I don't buy it.

I buy it as a born ND with trauma on top. Narcissism I believe is trauma. Very bad behaviours and coping mechanisms but still trauma. Being ND is traumatic. Having massive emotions, feeling threatened. I can see why someone might blame the other person not knowing that it was the ND.

I wonder if narcissism requires a perfect storm. Perhaps stemming from some ND at the core? Then micro storms forming together to form a narc.

@Pleaseshutthefuckup what's difficult for me is the idea that there's a massively strong genetic component and little else. If I look at my family tree, particularly at the paternal family tree, and genetics are driving all of it, then I'm screwed, and I probably should never have had children.

It's been very hard for me to accept myself knowing what I come from, the genes I have been given, the people those genes came from. How can I possibly ever hope to be a decent human being after being fished out of a gene pool that produced murderers and wife beaters? I have to look at my face in the mirror every day and accept myself. But if some of me was made by environment, and I can undo or change it, then I have hope.

@Crazysnakes I think it’s more environment that shapes who you are and that is fuelled by who you are as a person.
All of us here have pulled away from our families because (as well as being on the receiving end of shitty behaviour) we are nothing like our families at our core. The reason we were targeted is because we are not like them at our core and they recognise that.
I look at mine and DHs family and the horrible family members are the ones that stayed close to the original family units - because they are birds of a feather flocking together. So I don’t think it’s particularly genetics driving it.

Because you are as unique as the rest of us! We just aren’t fucked up as much as others. I believe some of it is luck. I remember my IDVA said that my intelligence has saved me. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. I was lucky to have my brain, it has saved me. I have a hungry brain, I don’t take face value.

Yes, I think it's nature + nurture too, and it's often impossible to judge how much of each because they cannot be untangled, but at the same time, the environment is created by relatives who were created by their genetics and childhood (if you grow up in your family of origin) and on it goes.

There was one sibling in my father's family who got out as soon as he could and distanced himself from them as an adult. He never married or had children. I have sometimes thought that maybe I have something in common with him.

I am struggling a bit at the moment I admit, feeling quite anxious and lonely (various reasons, this is always a tricky time of year for me, in a few weeks it will pass and I'll feel better).

The fact you're on this thread says quite explicitly that you are different. You were always different and destined to grow beyond the system you're part of.

I see myself this way.

I have behaved in ways that were a little like my nutty mother; sociopathic I feel. But I was always going to be different and seek another way because I was born to be different. You're the same. I don't need to read any more to see that.

Narcissism and sociopathy is believed to be highly environmental mixed with temperament. Risk factors I do believe are being ND because of the ongoing trauma of that experience. I have no proof or evidence of that theory, but I do believe it to be true. My family are not ND and are high on the personality disorder scale. So it's difficult to know.

I believe there are some genetic risks to narcissism and sociopathy. But some of us will be different no matter what we're born into.

I was displaying behaviour in relationship with my ex that wasn't really healthy. I would deny the reality that I didn't want to be in this but I felt I'd never get anyone else. My ex knew it instinctively I feel and I just gaslit him. I criticised his appearance a few times because he'd let himself go in my eyes. That wasn't really the reason, it was my projection. That's not ok. 15 years of therapy later I now am way beyond this mentality and highly reflective and accountable.

I am not personality disordered and something different in me made me seek a way out.

You are one of those people.

I knew by the time I was about 13 that I would not stay in my family as an adult. The plan was to get through school, get to uni so I could move to another town, and then disappear. I couldn't see any other way out, and I was determined that I was going to get out. It didn't quite happen as planned for various reasons but the adult life I have carved out for myself is very close to it. I can remember feeling afraid for my mother, of what would happen if I left her behind, but also knowing that I didn't have a choice. Me wanting her to leave wasn't enough reason for her to do it. I didn't matter enough. I was going to have to rescue myself. I've really struggled to shake off knowing that I didn't matter enough. It still hurts me now.

I think there are personality disorders in the family. Certainly for my father, and, I suspect, a different (but compatible with my father's) one for my mother. When I was younger I definitely had some very unhealthy behaviours, I can see that now, but I didn't know any better, and as soon as I knew, I put a stop to them. Still a work in progress though.